Sporting Society Volume Ii Part 13

At last there was a doubtful whimper; then a hard-looking man in mufti (a local horse dealer) stood up in his stirrups and held his hat high above his head. A dozen keen pair of eyes saw the signal, and though no foolish halloa imperilled their chance of a run, the light and colour came back into the men's faces, and they forgot in a moment the miseries of the morning as they marked the lithe red form of reynard steal out of covert, and with a whisk of his grey-tagged brush, make off leisurely, with his head set straight for the stiffest line in the county.

By this time the first doubtful whimper had been caught up and repeated in fuller and more certain tones, and there was little need of the horn to call loiterers from covert.

One after another the beauties tumbled out in hot haste, hackles up.

For one moment each seemed to dwell as he cleared the brakes, and then with a rush they gathered to where old Monitor had the line under the lee of a grey stone wall, along which the whole pack glanced, swift and close packed as wild fowl on the wing, while the keen November air thrilled with the maddest, merriest music that ever made a sportsman's blood tingle in his veins.

The wild freshness of the morning, with its bright sunshine, had given place to frost, and men settled grimly down to their work with the conviction that with such a burning scent and an afternoon fox few would live with hounds to the finish.

The field was never a large one from the start. None but those who got away at once had a chance of seeing the run, for the first mile was ridden at racing pace over a lovely gra.s.s country, with nothing to stop hounds or men save low stone walls, over which they slipped without a rattle like the phantoms of a dream. Amongst those still with hounds at the end of the first mile were the two ladies and the master. Polly's red jacket had followed George Vernon as the needle follows the magnet--a little too closely, perhaps, for the comfort of the magnet.

Kate had been in trouble on the right, her old horse, fresh and mad with excitement and out of temper with the long restraint of the morning, had got his ears laid flat back and the bit in his teeth.

For the moment the temperate habits of past years were forgotten, and poor Kate, with arms aching and powerless, felt herself flashing over stout stone walls at a pace which would have been dangerous over sheep hurdles.

Polly's chestnut, on the contrary, was behaving in a manner which would have done credit to the best horse in Galway or with the Heythrop, steadying himself at every wall and popping over with the least possible exertion to himself or risk to his rider.

And now five of the "pursuers" were in one field, gra.s.s beneath their feet and a fair stone wall without a gap in it in front.

All except Polly probably noticed the rushes which grew in tiny bunches beneath the wall, and guessed from them and from the sudden dip of the land that the take-off would be a boggy one.

In vain Kate tried to get a pull at her horse. On the left Vernon and Polly had got over with a scramble. One man was down, and a second felt that the roan was worth another fifty at least for the way he kicked himself clear of the dirt.

With a rush which would have landed him well on the other side of twenty feet of water, the brown went at the highest place he could find in the wall. Kate knew what must come, but hardened her heart and faced it. As the old horse tried to rise, he stuck in the heavy bog. There was a crash; for a moment everything spun round, and Kate was down with a stunning fall.

Had anyone seen her, of course even the run of the season would have been given up to render her a.s.sistance, but her only companions in this particular field had the lead of her, and the side walls hid her from other people's view, besides which Kate Lowry was one who had long since established her right to look after herself in the hunting-field.

For a minute or two the slim girl's figure lay p.r.o.ne and motionless on the damp turf, while her horse stood by, hanging his wise old head regretfully over the ruin he had made. Then the girl raised herself on her elbow, pushed the fair hair out of her eyes, and sitting up, looked into the old horse's wistful face with a half smile.

"You old fool, Joe!" she said; "you ought to have known better at your time of life."

Rising to her feet, she leaned her head for a moment on her saddle, pressing her hand to her side as if in pain, and then backing her horse so that he stood close alongside the wall, she climbed slowly and with difficulty back into the saddle.

"I wonder how long we lay under that wall, Joe?" soliloquized Kate, as she walked him through a gap in the next wall; "and I wonder, too, where the hounds are, and if I must give it up and let that Preece girl beat me?"

Listening intently, she sat for a moment by the roadside, the old horse's ears p.r.i.c.ked keenly forward. At last she thought she heard hounds running, it seemed, to her right. Without a moment's hesitation she turned Joe round, and, sobered by his fall, that mud-besmeared veteran popped over the wall as cleverly as a cat, only to be reined up short as he lit, for there, streaming over another wall, were the whole pack, going as keenly and as fiercely now as in the first three fields.

With them were only two hors.e.m.e.n, the master and the man in mufti.

As the three joined forces, George noticed for the first time his cousin's white face and muddy garments.

"Why, Kate, where have you been? Not hurt, I hope?" and though the words were curt and simple, the expression in his face was less careless than it might have been.

"No, thanks; more mud than bruises, I think. Where is Miss Preece?"

"Rolled off in the only piece of plough in the county, and seems to have taken root there," laughed the ungallant M.F.H.

"No damage done, I hope?" said Kate.

"Hurt? No. Her clever chestnut put his feet into a furrow and stumbled, _la belle_ Polly rolled off, and though we put her up again, she seemed to have had enough, especially as she believed that you had given up the chase some time since."

"Oh, indeed," laughed Kate, a little grimly. "You see hers was her _first_ fall; it makes a difference."

And now the conversation dropped. Each of those three riders had his or her hands full for the time. The fox in front of them was, indeed, a straight-necked one. Save for the one turn which had given Kate a second chance, he had gone straight as the crow flies since the find.

Save for a check of a short five minutes, the hounds had run almost as if they were coursing him, and it was already a full half-hour since the find, and the spire of Kempford church was now visible on the right. At the back of Kempford village was a well-known drain, in which more than one stout fox had found safety. For this reynard seemed to be making, and to judge of the frequency with which each of the three horses rattled their walls as they skimmed over them, his pursuers were hardly likely to get there even if he was.

But between the Kempford drain and him there ran the deep and broad stream of the Cheln, unfordable, and rarely, if ever, crossed (save by a bridge) in the annals of fox-hunting. As the three neared the river, they were (thanks to a lucky turn) in the same field with the hounds.

"By Jove, there he is," cried the "dealer," breaking silence for the first time, and there, sure enough, dragging his gallant but draggled person up the bank opposite was poor "pug," in full view of the pack.

No otter hounds ever took water more savagely than did old Monitor and his comrades, almost whining with impatience to close with their gallant foe.

"Kate, for G.o.d's sake, don't try it," cried Vernon.

It was too late; the old horse had already been driven in, and the first woman who ever swam a horse across the Cheln was already battling with the stream, her lips hard set, her grey-blue eyes full of fire, and her whole face recalling vividly for the moment, in spite of its natural softness, the stern outlines of those ancestors whose war-worn profiles adorned the long galleries of the Hall.

It was a difficult swim, but old Joe's limbs were borne up bravely by the brave heart within, and it was not till long after the dripping habit had been dried that it occurred to Kate that, like Lord Cardigan, she had forgotten that she could not swim.

The M.F.H. and his cousin were now the only two left with the hounds, and in front of them rose, perhaps, the worst fence in the Gonaway country, a stiff stone wall, the stones all firmly morticed, and on the top a row of rough-edged slabs set on end like the teeth of a saw.

Under the take-off side ran a deep, little stream, nowhere less than six feet wide, and even at that the banks were undermined and unsafe.

The cousins were alongside in the field which this mantrap bounded.

Every atom of colour had left her cheeks now, and her lips were white with pain. Had George's whole heart and mind not been in the chase, he must have seen, and insisted on her returning home. As it was, he only said, "They've killed him, Kate; I must have it and save a bit of the best fox I ever hunted." And if hounds' tongues could be believed, they had indeed at last pulled the gallant old fox down, though the rugged piece of masonry before alluded to hid the pack from view.

"Is there no other way, George?"

"No, don't you follow me; go back by the lane and I'll bring you the brush if I can save it."

So saying, the master turned his horse and set himself at the place where the wall looked lowest. Kate had been bred in a hunting country, but truth to tell, her heart hung on that leap.

"One thrust to his hat and two to the sides of his brown," and then he shot to the front, seat steady and hands well down. Right bravely the horse rose at the leap, but the bank broke as he rose, his knees caught the coping stone with a jarring thud, and man and horse lay stunned on the other side.

To the wild cry of "George, George!" no answer came back, and then it was for the first time that poor Kate knew how irretrievably her heart had been lost to her dashing cousin.

To gallop to the gate was useless, though she essayed it. The gate was six barred and locked, moreover, the wall and its guarding stream still ran on beyond the gate. Kate had lost her head and her heart, but not her pluck.

"Just one more try, Joe," she whispered, and with a rush that seemed born of the last energies of a gallant heart the brave old horse faced and cleared the coping stone. Many fresh horses might have cleared that wall; but they talk of that leap still in Gonaway. Nearly five feet of hard stone and a biggish brook in front was no small feat, they say, for a tired horse, even with bonny Kate Lowry on his back.

Under the wall lay the grey, stone dead, and under him George Vernon, his white face looking up at the sky now darkly bright with the frost of a November evening.

How Kate got her cousin from under his horse and watched the colour creep back to his bronzed cheek, no one knows, for she kept these things in her own sweet heart, but it was late in the evening that a party sent out to search met an old woman leading along a donkey cart, on which lay poor Vernon, his leg and collar bone broken, while beside him sat a lady, her face white with pain, which her colour alone betrayed, and after them came a yokel leading old Joe, and followed by the best pack in Ireland.

The day had one more event in store for the villagers of Kempford.

Arrived at the inn, Kate Lowry did what no Lowry had ever been known to do before--she fainted. On recovering, she shame-facedly exclaimed, "I think I must have broken something when I fell at the beginning of the run, and it has hurt me rather ever since."

She had broken something. No more nor less than three ribs; but if she had refused a humble prayer made to her three weeks later she would have broken something more important--"the heart" of the M.F.H. for Gonaway, who to this day may be heard to declare "that there is no pluck like a woman's, and I ought to know, for I married the pluckiest girl in old Ireland."

SOME CURIOUS HORSES

BY CAPTAIN R. BIRD THOMPSON